The men who had covered her steaming body with leaves had fled the scene utterly, but their fleeing stayed in them, and many times they returned to the place where nothing was left but a light brown suede coat. There were no other earthly remains — not hair, not bones, not hoofs, and for the rest of eternity, the woman stalked the men and haunted them.
SHE OPENS HER arms as if for the first time. The artist, the magician, the cat have any number of lives, the mother sings, and so do I! Sparkle is surrounding us, she says. And glitter, and bits of paper — that is what I find so astonishing.
THE SPIEGELPALAIS IS flooded with bluish greenish light. Today they read if it were possible to see the universe from afar, it would appear pale green, somewhere between turquoise and aquamarine. What a beautiful thought that is, and they feel unaccountably serene. She drifts without fear. Someone has come to console them. The light of blue stars combines with the light of red stars, to produce aquamarine. We float in a vast — but vast cannot begin to describe it — infinity of bluish green.
THE MOTHER HAS turned into a boat and is travelling in a northerly direction downstream against the prevailing north wind. She is carrying the Grandmother from the North Pole, the child who is a baby, a package and a bower of roses. A beautiful conduit, a vessel, but nothing more. On the journey, the mother must transfer a package she has carried her whole life but has been forbidden to open. The package is off-limits to the mother — it is just something she must bear. This gift from the Grandmother is to be passed to the child through the mother’s body. Afloat, astounded, the infant opens the glowing box. She holds the gorgeous glowing braid of the genetic code, reserved just for her, in wonder. The Grandmother and child step onto the shore hand in hand, cradling the gift.
The mother, rose-laden, having done what she has come to do, drifts off. The smell of roses is overwhelming. German scientists say that the scent of roses perceived during REM sleep leads to the most astonishing of all dreams.
JUST LIKE ALL children, the child would leave before too much longer. The electronic world, shining and mysterious with its bleeps and trills, beckoned.
The mother would pack a little bundle for the child to carry there. In the sack she would put a pinecone, an acorn, a branch of berries, beeswax, an evergreen sprig.
WHEN THE GRANDMOTHER from the North Pole gets back into the boat for a moment and lies down under a blanket of roses and closes her eyes and rests awhile and smiles, she is really paying homage to the mother; she is really saying that she thinks it’s okay — the person her daughter has become.
IT WAS REALLY all right: the mother was lost, but to what no one knew — to her daydreams, or visions, or whatever it was, as the child too would one day be lost to the glyphs floating past on the blue screen. The Grandmother from the North Pole beckons her daughter to join them in the next room on that cool electronic field, but the mother, sparkling in her own right, demurs, and gently closes the door.
For the mother, there is no obvious way out of the labyrinth.
PERPETUAL READINGS WERE being held in the hopes of setting off a Memory Chord. On the second day of the readings there seemed to be some eye flickering that signaled recognition. Photographs had been placed on an altar, and the elders stared at them. Once I could see birds, but now simply the presence of birds is enough, one of the elders, the bird-watcher, had once said.
All stood on a veranda and looked out onto an indefinite field. In the near distance, a figure could be seen sitting under a fig tree.
How beautiful is the aging process, the Grandmother from the North Pole thinks.
WHEN THE GRANDMOTHER from the North Pole becomes suddenly woozy and falls to the floor, the mother far off in the Valley rises automatically from her bed and lifts the window sash where snow has begun to fall. She looks for her where the medians of longitude converge.
The mother’s hair stands on end. She is something winged now as she leaves the window. She is iridescent.
THE CHILD PULLS at the mother’s sleeve. They had fallen asleep in front of the giant screen. Except for the mother and child, the theater has been vacated. She points to the dark stage as if something is about to happen. And suddenly before them. Mother, look!
THE EARTHQUAKE IN GinGin Province killed over ten thousand children. Mothers rushed to the sites. Most of the schools were too flimsy to hold children in the event of a catastrophe. The wreckage is filled with the bodies of children. On top of the findable children’s bodies, small branches of pine, evergreen sprigs have been left. Many of the children’s backpacks remain even now, and books are everywhere.
Too many of the dead are children in a country where families are allowed to have one child, and one child only. Some parents are digging with their hands for their only children, but many of the only children are now dead, and even if permission were granted, some of the parents are too old to have another.
THE SCHOOLS WERE among the most flimsy buildings in GinGin. The GinGin mother is not flimsy, but she is at the mercy of the Flimsy World she has placed her child in. Schools are a keystone in any community. Schools are relied upon in a society to fulfill one of the most important missions of all. The schools should have been greatly bolstered and fortified.
The bodies there had turned to vapor, and the city was enveloped by ghosts. If the GinGin government acquiesces for a time and allows people to conceive another child to replace the one under the rubble, this time the people of GinGin Province vow they will build a better child. Instead of waiting for the schools to be upgraded, they will take matters into their own hands. The people are determined that next time they will build a fortified child, a child with an astounding rebar structure and reinforcing rods. A guard against disasters and further tragedy.
The government, for once in accordance with the parents, thinks that instead of retrofitting the buildings, it would be better to come up with a way of retrofitting the children, seeing as they are such precious resources to their parents. In the future, the goal of the government as well will be to build a better child. An indestructible child. A child with a more solid armature — an earthquake-resistant child. Concrete slabs might replace the thighs, and they might be reinforced with steel rods and supporting braces. Iron rods in concrete could boost the resilience of the child’s central columns. As an early warning system, their blood would be designed to detect the motion of magma, the bubbling and broiling from a distance moving toward them. Children then might walk with ease through the Trembling World, and there would be no long banners with dead children’s names written in their parents’ blood. A child fifty stories tall might be the norm. A child like no child anyone has ever seen before.
BUT FOR STRUCTURES and children to withstand an earthquake, the ground itself must hold together, and so along with building a better child, it will be necessary to build a better earth. When loose or wet soil shakes, parts of the soil rotate, and the soil then acts like a liquid or a gelatin.
A foundation firmly connected to solid rock, deep in the ground, is required. Beams and columns of child must be strapped together on the rocks with metal, and the floors and tops of the child must be securely fastened to the walls. Then the child must be sprayed with liquid concrete and reinforced with steel brackets. The brain must be bolted to the skull.